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I understand you’re frustrated and there are a lot of things going on, but you’re much further than you think you are. The struggle is where the money is. The money is in the struggle. So, if you’re struggling, you’re making money. If you’re struggling, you are money.

Let me explain. You see Gary – I’m coming at you for a reason. Because you are about to fucking punk the fuck out like a scared little bitch. That’s what you’re about to do because you’re struggling, because it is fucking hard. It’s taking more out of you them you want to give. You’re making all of these excuses like a scared little bitch.

You don’t want to work hard. You want to come home and chill. But Gary, this is the problem with that. The money is in the struggle. If you’re struggling, you’re money.

Many people don’t understand that. You’re looking at the end result as if it’s the process. The process is struggle. The money is struggle.

There are a lot of people with some misconceptions about success, Gary. There are many people who think if they work for a month or two or three, maybe 90 days or 120 days and you’re not where you want to be that something is wrong. You think you’re on the wrong path. You think, maybe you made a mistake. You think maybe it’s a scam.

Now, I’ve been observing some things with clients of mine like Gary and with people in general. Many people give up at the first friction point. That knocks 75% of the people out of the frame. For those who stay, that second friction point knocks out about 90% of them. Once we get into that rough and rugged area, there are only a few people left standing.

Here’s the thing Gary, many people have bamboozled you and led you astray and have you thinking that success is instantaneous. Success is a war. Success is a battle. Success is fucking hard. If you think you are going to change your life without changing who you are as a person, you’re sadly mistaken Gary.

It’s not going to happen. If the way you are right now was good enough to get what you want, you would fucking have it. Since you don’t have it, you aren’t good enough yet. It’s that simple.

We have a nation of people who think that success should be easy. Success is like training for a race. Say you’re a runner, right, and you’re out there on the track every morning. You’re on that track day in and day out. Gary – that is success.

People think success is running the race and winning it. But that’s not success. It’s not even close to success. I’m going to explain why. When you are training, you are in a consistent process of improving who you are. You’re running. You’re losing weight. You’re building endurance. You’re getting stronger.

Why do you need to train playboy? Why do you need to be out there in the rain, the snow, and the sleet to train? Why do you need to train right now for that race in the spring? Because you’re not good enough to run that race right now. This is commonly accepted by athletes. No one sits around and has a pity party, ‘I can’t run 26 miles right now. It’s too hard.”

Everybody realizes that their muscles aren’t ready. Their mind isn’t ready. Their feet aren’t ready. So, you get out there and you fucking train. That is the success. The race is just a metric to measure how well your training worked. Being out there every day running is your success.

You see Gary – I’m coming at you for a reason. Because you are about to fucking punk the fuck out like a scared little bitch. That’s what you’re about to do because you’re struggling, because it is fucking hard. It’s taking more out of you them you want to give. You’re making all of these excuses like a scared little bitch.

After you throw yourself a pity party. The you get over yourself. The sun rises the next day.

You’re going to start to complain. You’re going to start to bitch. That’s the manifestation of the dissatisfaction with yourself for giving up. What’s going to happen is your disgust and disappointment dissatisfaction is going to turn into hate and bitchiness when others are successful. You’ll be telling successful people, “Sure must be nice.” “You got lucky.” “I wish I had it like that.”

When you give up because you’ve had some setbacks or you have an injury and had to start all over Gary, that is on you. You can’t blame your lack of courage, your lack of gumption or your lack of commitment or heart on anyone else. Yes, it’s true, some people do get lucky. But that has nothing to do with your success. You can’t blame you lack of success on people who are successful.

If you want to tap out like some scared little bitch because it’s hard, then understand you will stop being successful. You can have a bad day. You can have a bad week. You can have a bad month, but if you have a bad year, it’s you because you refuse to revise, adjust and change.

Like I said, if you were good enough right now to have what you want, you would have it. If not, that is evidence that you need to train. You need to change. That is evidence that you need to prepare harder.

Success lives in the process and the struggle. You’ve got to get over yourself, Gary. The shit is not going to get any easier. There will be more competitors. The economy is going to go into another recession. That means there will be more people starting businesses. The sooner you commit to keep trying and not quit, the better. The question is, are you going to fight or bitch out.

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I don’t care what tools you give a person, until they think they can do it not much is going to happen. It’s like dating a chick with low self-esteem. You can tell her she’s beautiful. You can treat her very well. But because of her low self-esteem, it’s not going to penetrate to her hind brain. She’s going to continue to operate inconsistent with what you’re trying to bring to the table. I’ve done it a few times and it is a very ugly dynamic.

That’s where a lot of you are. When I do my business and I go to the comments and someone says, “I guess poor people can’t afford mentors.” I’m like, “Here we go again.”

There are a ton of mentors in libraries. Go to the library. Read books. Learn.

Once again, you can give people amazing and awesome information and if they’re not taking it in to a container that believes they can do it, it makes no difference. When I talk to you about these tactics and what people are doing, it comes from something I have done, something I have observed, and something I know to be true. But, I will get amazing push back because people don’t believe they are capable. It’s that simple.

It doesn’t matter how smart you are. It’s not a matter of your resources. What matters is how you think. I’ll tell you how I use the law of attraction. There are a few laws I use and I’m going to talk about one in this video.

Number one – dwell, dream, think, groom and talk about what you want. Talk about it all of the time. Believe you can get it. For some of you taking some of those courses I have while I was talking about the Craigslist dating method, that was the law of attraction. For those of you who have taken the course Scripted Days, that was the law of attraction, action and visualization.

Now, you can’t get what you want unless you know what you want. Then you must know what you want and believe with certainty that you’re going to get it. That’s where a lot of you go wrong.

There is no correlation between someone being a billionaire and you being poor. Thank God there is no correlation. The correlation would be your poverty mindset with your lack of action.

This is how it goes. First of all, you believe in a zero-sum game. Then the second thing that happens is you don’t try. It’s so crazy how many people accept failure before they even try. That’s the poverty mindset. The law of attractions means that what you dwell on becomes your life.

If you’re dwelling on poverty and how shit isn’t going right, that’s going to be your reality. It gets real deep. Once you accept that, your life is fucked.

I refuse to accept things the way they are. I operate on that premise. I’m a black man in America, right? I can get paid. I can make money. White people are going to buy from me. Asian people are going to buy from me. Black folks are going to buy from me.

I operate on that premise. I operate on that belief. And, damn Skippy, the shit happens. Now, I’ve had people fight me on that and tell me it’s just not going to happen. But, that’s my reality. Once again, when somebody is encapsulated in the poverty mindset, it’s very hard for them to change course.

So, for you to start getting the things you want, you must identify what you want. That’s simple enough right. Many people feel ashamed if they want a Bentley. Here’s a great example. I’ve heard people with the money say, “Oh, I’d never spend that much.” It’s not about the money or them going broke. It’s how it would appear to other people.

So, if you have $10 million cash in the bank, right? What is a Bentley? I think it’s $300,000 or $400,000. There are people who could buy a Bentley but they won’t do it because they are worried about what other people will think.

It gets really deep. Once you start to accept things in your hind brain, your hind brain goes to work and makes sure that it happens.

For you people who want a relationship, start telling yourself, “I am going to have a great relationship.” Start telling yourself that now. Don’t worry about who it is going to be with and all that other stuff. Get it in your mind that it is possible.

There’s a group of people who are twenty-something, thirty-something, forty-something who don’t believe they can have a good relationship. Then they attract people into their lives who make that shit come true.

When I used to do Facebook fuckery, I remember this friend of mine who always attracted the wrong kind of dudes into her life. I told her that it was something in her that was attracting them. She didn’t believe me. She said, “They lie. I was misled.” You can be misled here and there, but if every dude you meet is dusty, there’s something wrong with you.

I’ve had a few incidences where I’ve attracted the wrong kind of woman in my life, and some bad shit happened. But instead of me saying, all women are fucked up, I’d asked myself what did I do to attract that into my life. One of the incidences happened after my friend died.

I was still grieving, so I wasn’t thinking correctly. It didn’t happen before or since. You could have gone through a serious, life-changing event and you weren’t powered up and that’s how you attracted the wrong person in your life. Accepting your role in that gives you the power to change that shit. But as long as it is someone else’s fault or someone else’s responsibility, and you’re just a poor little victim, that shit is going to keep happening.

This doesn’t just happen with romantic relationships. It’s all relationships. It’s friendships. It’s business relationships. It’s everything, because your mind isn’t where it needs to be.

So, Number 1- You can do this. Number two – Take copious action in alignment with what you want. The third thing is when shit doesn’t go right, you have to go back and asked yourself where you went wrong. Ask yourself that question versus blaming someone else. By asking yourself that question, where did I go wrong, you give yourself the power to fix shit.

You take the feedback and you go out there and double your efforts.

If you believe you can do it and that you deserve it and take action, you will see your life change. You’ll start to get the things you want. Your money will start to get nice. It’s all because of how you think and how you act.

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You have people, I don’t care how much evidence is given to them showing something won’t work out, they still operate on pure emotion. They don’t listen to logic. It is just, this is what I want. It should work out. It is a false narrative.

If you’re operating on false narratives and you get undesirable results, whose fault is that? If you continue to behave like things aren’t the way they are and those things bite you in the ass, who is to blame?

Not too long ago I had someone arguing with me over personal responsibility on this channel. That’s what it boils down to. When you’re young, you have all the excuses in the world to be ignorant. You’re young. You don’t know anything. Maybe you grew up in a bad situation. Maybe nobody’s helping you out or giving you good mentorship or guidance.

But once you reach a certain age and you remain ignorant, that’s on you. That’s not on anyone else. That is on you. That is your baggage. That is something that you own, but you get people who just refuse to accept that.

Mindset is critical in each and every thing that you do. It is so important. I don’t even have a good example.

Sometimes I get frustrated because people are looking for shortcuts. People are looking for a push button solution where they really don’t have to work that hard or they’re looking at someone else’s life without breathing that air. You can’t look at someone else’s success and hope that’s going to be yours because typically you’re not going to get all the information. You can reverse engineer only so much. That’s one of the things I learned in sales.

When you are not privy to the right information, it is hard to make better decisions. It is hard. It is daunting. I see many people who research successful people. I suggest that you do research successful people. At some point, you have to take that research and put it where the rubber meets the road. You’ve got to put it in effect. Once again, that’s mindset.

I have experienced some things in my life that people said weren’t going to happen. I put it in my mind that it was going to happen. I clung to it. There are some days you get weak. You have days where you don’t believe. But you have to keep your mind straight and focused on that aim.

Because if you don’t, the power of negativity is so strong, it can take you out quickly. That’s one of the things that happens. As we go forward in life, more opportunities are given to us and more things are required from us. That’s just how it is. I think many people don’t want to deal with all of the changes that will come from success.

That’s the mindset because right now wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, there’s a certain level of mental inertia. You’ll get to a certain place and you’ll stop. It’s not because you don’t have the ability. It’s because you haven’t adjusted your mindset for the next stage. That is really critical when you are trying to be successful. You have to take your mindset to the next level.

You have to constantly push and expand what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it for yourself. I’ll give you a great example about mindset. For a long, long time I was a reseller. I loved it. I enjoyed it. It actually got me the opportunity to speak to you on these videos.

But, I moved on. That was a personal decision. Now, I’ve heard stuff that I’ve abandoned the resale community like we were married and that’s my Boo. Now wait a minute. Just because you can’t move on, why shouldn’t I move on? One thing about resellers is they become almost cult-like. The more successful you are, the deeper you get.

I’ll give you an example. There was a guy here in Atlanta named Dave. Dave was killing it. Fortunes changed and Dave didn’t adjust to the internet. Then he started to lose. At one point, Dave was strong. But he did not adapt. Eventually he lost it all because he did not improve his mindset. When you are successful, it becomes very hard for you to change your mindset. That’s what happened to Dave and he’s out of the game.

One thing I’ve learned about people who are overall successful is that it is very hard for these people to hate. The reason is when you are successful and happy, it is not worth your time to be a hater. Essentially, it is just a lack of happiness that creates a great deal of hate.

It’s all about mindset. It is very easy to get sucked into the mindset of hate. Because hate is seductive. It creates a lot of energy. Hate creates an abundance of energy that many people don’t know what to do with. I’ve seen it on YouTube. People get caught up in hate fests. It’s all about your mindset.

When you consume better mental food, you have better outcomes. Then a lot of the negative stuff can’t take root in you. There’s just no room for it. There’s no room for those seeds to be planted because you’re being a good manager of your mental environment.

That’s very, very important that you do that. Your mindset determines how you deal with happiness and setbacks and failure. That stuff is very important. Everyone is going to be unhappy at some point. Everyone’s going to fail at some point. It’s just going to happen. That’s just a snapshot or a moment. But some people will take a snapshot and turn it into a feature film.

Reduce your Facebook time at least by 90% unless it is business oriented. Also, stop listening to negative people. Don’t hang out with them. Focus. Take that time you were on Facebook and put it into successful endeavors. Do that for 90 days. Then get back to me and tell me how right I am.

If you want to see how a person is living, look at where they put their time. I’m an internet marketer, I put my time in YouTube and Facebook creating products. That’s what I do. The more time I invest there, the more lessons and feedback I get, which means the more freedom I have and the more money I make.

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Here’s the problem with getting knowledge for the sake of getting knowledge. You want to look good. Here’s the thing, the hard work of success is hard. I’m weary right now. I’ve been up since 4am this morning working on stuff and doing stuff.

Let’s just say I was looking at Audible at a book on sales and I read that book. Then I continued to execute from that book before I read any other books. Then I would read a book every day when I got up and try to do something. If I don’t do it well, I will try again and keep reading books. After about a month of this schedule, you would be pretty proficient at what you’re doing.

Going to college sounds good and looks good. It feels good. What happens when you get that job? Oh, you didn’t get that job. But, you have that student loan debt. It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t feel good.

That’s what a lot of people are doing. They are out here getting knowledge for the sake of getting knowledge. They’re not executing. They aren’t applying this knowledge. They’re not doing anything with the knowledge. They are just getting knowledge.

The thing is if you really look at how people are successful, they are successful in the dark. They’re successful when no one is looking. They’re successful when people are having that moment of failure.

I’ll give you an example of why I am doing this live stream. We were supposed to have the live stream with the “Weed Girl,” right? It just didn’t work. The internet isn’t working. I’m doing this off of my phone. Something very positive came out of that. I’ll tell you about that later.

I have two internet connections, one in each office. None of it is working. I’m sitting here, like what the hell. I’m doing this off my phone.

I tried to do this live stream and the orientation was all jacked up. I’m serious. I set this live stream up because there is no internet I’m running the internet off the phone on my computer then that somehow interrupted it and when it came back it was lopsided.

I’m sitting there like, you’ve got to be kidding me. The thing is, I was going to do this live stream. It was going to happen and it’s happening.

In that space where the live stream didn’t happen with the Weed Girl in the Grow house, the live stream didn’t happen with the regular stuff. There were four failure points altogether. It’s enough to make you say, “I’m done for the day.” But, that’s when you push through harder. When these things happen, that’s when you have to push through harder. That’s when you have to go ahead and put forth extra effort. In that little space, that’s where success is.

I could have blown this off. I could have worked on this tomorrow and done something else. The thing is, those videos are for next week when I’m not going to be here. So, what are we going to do? Are we going to let the fact that the wire cast didn’t work and the Google Hangouts didn’t work stop us? No, we’re not.

Take the Craigslist book. People are going to get that book and then when they run into that first barrier, they are going to stop. It’s going to be just like that. People will say, “I don’t see this working.” “I don’t see this happening.” “I’m just going to go back here and watch some cartoons and I’m not going to execute.” ‘I’m not going to keep working.”

That’s the thing. I can’t give that lesson to you guys. I’m trying to show it to you. I’m just sitting here. This is some craziness, right?

When things are hard, that’s when your true self shows up. The reality of who you are and what you are is coming out. Because everybody wants to be rich. But no one wants to put in the work. What’s that saying? You’ve got a minimum wage work ethic and millionaire dreams. No, that’s not right. You’re trying to be a millionaire with a minimum wage work ethic. That’s it.

Stuff happens. You have even worse things. Look at those poor unfortunate people in Las Vegas. They were at a concert having a good time and then there was death from above. One minute they are smiling at someone on stage and then a bullet went through their head and they are dead.

There is a lesson to be learned from that terrible Las Vegas crime. You should not wait. You should not wait because you don’t know when it is going to be your last breath. That’s part of the reason I came on today, so I can do more tomorrow.

It’s all about mindset. I typically wake up believing my life is going to be perfect. Most days it does. This is just a challenging four hours and then life is going to self-correct again.

If you’ve got the courses and read the books, what is the big barrier to executing? What is it? I think a big part of it may be fear of changing your environment. What I mean by that is that success means you have added responsibility. Like I have payroll to meet and offices to pay for. I have a chef and I have to go over the menu with them. I have a maid and I have to let her in. Having that much responsibility is probably why a lot of people are tapping out.

Many people think success is a fancy car, right? It’s a big house. It’s vacations or Big Booty Betty, right? Really, it’s none of those things. The real success happens when everything is going wrong and you’re still showing up. That’s real success.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a day like this. It’s not even a day. It’s only four hours.

I’m just here for a minute to tell you that you need to keep going. It’s as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. It’s as simple as getting up and making your bed. The first step is the hardest. You can have anything you want if you’re willing to work for it.

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There are some people on the internet talking about how some bank is going to give you a $20K or $30K in business credit. That isn’t true. Be sure to watch this video from the beginning to the end and I will be sure to school you on how to play this credit game.

The reason I call this tradeline trickeration is because there are many people out there saying, “Hey, I got unsecured business credit lines. This is true, but they aren’t telling you about the fine print. If you go to Staples and you get a Staples credit card and they don’t ask for your social security number, then you have unsecured credit with no personal guarantee. You have it. That’s the reality of it. But, the problem with that is they aren’t going deep into the details.

I’m going to walk you down the path of how things used to be and how it is today. A long, long time ago on the internet, there was this form and it walked you through the steps of how to get business credit. Number 1 – form an LLC. You were told to go out and get some credit from Uline, Grainger or Staples. Back then if you had $5K or $10K in a bank account, that counted as a tradeline.

So, you get those and you buy something, and wait until it reports and then, BAM! You’ve got a Paydex. Once you had a Paydex, you could go to Ford Fleet and with $2500 down you could get yourself a brand-new truck with no social security number. That was real. It blew my mind. Fast forward, we had the recession of all recessions. It was damn near close to a depression. Then we got the Patriot Act and there was a tightening of the rules.

Many of the banks decreased people’s credit limits. It became a totally different regulatory environment. A lot of the bank products were eliminated. The “no social security” products went away.

Keep hope alive. Some of it could come back. If you have no financial discipline, don’t get that credit. Don’t do it. Don’t even get the Staples card. Don’t do any of that stuff.

What you want to do is to get yourself higher income and more cash flow. Here’s the thing, personal credit is very important for business credit. I don’t care what anyone else tells you. It’s very important.

How you structure your LLC is also important to building business credit. No one’s telling you about that. Many of these flimsy LLCs, you go online and do your incorporation, there are no operating agreements in there or Articles of Organization.

Here’s what I want you to do tomorrow. Call up a CPA or an attorney and ask them how much it would cost for them to set up an LLC for you. Do that. Just do it. They will probably charge $600 to $25,000.

One of the things we’re doing in Hustle Camp is I’m going to teach you how to create your LLCs properly. I’m going to teach you how to fix your personal credit. I’m going to teach you how to develop proper unsecured lines of credit. It could take you six months to two years to do this depending upon your current credit situation. I’m going to teach you how to make more money.

One of the things you should do is monitor your credit. I constantly monitor my credit. I’m going to give you my morning routine. The first thing I do every morning is I got through all my accounts. Here’s something that a lot of folks won’t tell you. When you have big balances in your bank and you get robbed or there is some type of fraud, the bank is not going to do a credit of that money unless they were at fault.

Let’s say you have a bank balance of $2 million and someone robs you of $300,000. The bank will investigate and ask you questions like, ‘What kind of security did you have in place to prevent that?” They aren’t going to take a $300,000 hit. So, if you have large balances, you need to watch them closely. Every morning I go through my bank accounts and credit card accounts to see if anything weird happens.

It’s your money. It’s your credit. It’s up to you to protect it. I’m signed up with the Equifax service and nothing happened to my account.

Plus, here’s a quick tip for you about banking. Stop using your debit cards to shop. Get yourself a rewards card and use that and pay it off every week. This takes discipline.

For your business, you don’t want debit cards for your business. That’s insanity. You may actually want to have an ATM account where the only purpose is to draw money out. That way, if the card is ever compromised, the damage is very limited.

You should never have a debit card to your payroll account. You should never have a debit card to your merchant account. If you don’t have a debit account, your chances for fraud go down so low.

When people do silly shit like run their entire business through one checking account, they are asking for problems.

Everyone needs to get a credit monitoring service. You should monitor your stuff every day or at least once a week. If you are a person making money, you are a target. A lot of these identity thieves will go through your trash. That’s why you need a shredder in your house.

I’m going to give you some tips. Tip #1 – Do not do disputes online. Order a paper copy of your report. Send it in and follow the steps. By doing it online, when you agree to their terms of service, you actually leave some of your rights on the table. Disputing stuff online is one of the dumbest things you can do.

Everyone should create a budget. Get your budget together and find out what you can sell. Then the next stage is to find out what your net worth is. Then increase your income. Then build a business.

There is a lot of misinformation out there. You’re going to have to get your personal credit together to get into these unsecured larger business credit lines. I’m talking about a line of credit from a bank or a Visa or MasterCard or American Express. They’re going to look at your personal score.

Hustle Camp goes into depth on all of these subjects.

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You have got to raise your fuck-up threshold. When I work on a project and it doesn’t work out, then I jump to another project. Everybody isn’t used to working like that. I tend to live my life assuming everybody is like me. I do. Then I realize, maybe not.

I am still building and growing. Because I don’t have this sit down and do-nothing bone, it has helped me in many ways. I feel like I’ll probably be doing this the next 20 years. It’s not because I have to, it’s because I want to.

You have to be able to see the good things when it is all falling part. I’ll give you an example. I was working with this client and things were going great. We got to half a million dollars a month. Then we ran into a supply chain problem which cut us down to $250K a month. Then we hit another supply chain snag which pushed us down to $140K a month.

Then some other stuff happened. I knew the things we did were going to work and really take off, but it was going to take some time. When you are working towards your goal, you have to be able to see the shiny stuff even when it is covered in mud.

When people say that Amazon and Shopify are simple, they aren’t telling you the whole story. Let’s take a Shopify store. A Shopify store is just a tool. Without traffic, it’s nothing. Shopify has become a verb. You hear people say, let’s Shopify.

Shopify is a robust platform. It can take any amount of traffic. Kylie Jenner did the launch of her makeup brand and nearly shut the site down. There were like millions of sales in like thirty minutes. Shopify is good to put your stuff on because it can handle a spike in traffic, but without traffic it is kind of worthless. You’ve got to bring the traffic.

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This is the thing about family and friends. Many people subconsciously keep them self in the same place, because they know if they move ahead, their friends or family are gone. It can be lonely at times when you make up your mind to start a business or move ahead in life. You have to make friends with other successful people. If you sit down tonight and think about it, you know it’s true.

I’ll tell you a little story. Years ago, I had a friend. We were the type of friends that I could just drop over to his house whenever. We used to live together.

Then I did this crackhead thing. I did this big furniture deal then I spent my whole check on a new BMW. Yes, I did that. It was paid for, right?

I roll over to my friend’s house in this brand-new BMW, right. He comes out and says, “Hey, you got a new ride.”

“I said yeh. I spent my whole check on it.”

He said, “You put your whole check down?”

I said, “Yes, it was my whole check. This is paid for.”

Then we go in his house and there was a little look in his face, like “Huh?”

See once again, I was the shit bird of the crew. Everyone else was doing better. We were all in the military together.

Then it kind of ended weird because he was like, “Nita said you can’t just be dropping by here. You’ve got to call first.”

I said, “Ok. No problem.”

I’m thinking, I’ve got to call? When did this happen?

So, weeks go by and I’m thinking I want to go by and see him. So, I call. There was no response. No answer. Nothing. The I had my friend call him and he picked right up.

I had my other friend Darrell call Chris. Then I thought, well maybe it was the phone. Then I called Chris again, and he didn’t pick up. So, then I asked Darrell to call Chris again. Chris picks right up. I talked to another friend, and Chris picked up his call. When I called, he wouldn’t pick up.

I couldn’t believe it. I lost a friend because I was successful. I’m not going to lie, I was hurt. But, I learned a valuable lesson. There are some people who are your friend because you are beneath them. They know you’re beneath them and they can feel good because they are doing better than you.

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Question: How did you make $6 million in revenues?

Answer: I’ve actually made more than $6 million. First, I created a YouTube channel. Then I wrote, How to Make Money A to Z with Self-Storage Unit Auctions. Then I sold the book from roughly 2009 to 2012 and made $1.5 million. The Craigslist book did like $400,000. Then I sold consulting services and also sold other courses. That’s what made me over $6 million dollars.

I worked hard for that money. I damn near died making that money. So, before you try to make that loot, you have to asked yourself if you’re willing to pay the price of not hanging out with your friends.

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I hear people say things like, “You can get rich and not work that hard. I hear people say this stuff. Here’s the thing, You can have something that moves and doesn’t take a lot of energy to move. For about two and a half years, I was retired. I would wake up with $2K, $3K or $4K in my bank account every day whether I did anything or not.

I also knew that wasn’t going to last forever so I banked that money. When it dropped, I figured it was over. I didn’t spend that money. I knew that someday it was going to be over and I was fine.

The problem with so much of the Hustler Porn is people think you can work and get to $2 or $3 million in only an hour or two. I’ll say something. There are some exceptional people who can pull that off. But you can’t compare the exceptional to the average person.

When you hustle hard and you are determined to do better, it shapes how you look at life.

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I intentionally broke my YouTube channel. Why did I do it? It was going to happen anyway.

What’s going on now with YouTube is insane. You’re seeing people with channels with millions of subscribers disappearing. I’ll give you an example. There was a guy, Soldier Knows Best that was a tech reviewer. He took two months off and his subscriber base went into the negative. This is the thing many people don’t know unless you’re doing this.

The new features in place dictate that you have to upload frequently. You have to. The old ways don’t work. I remember when I could get away uploading every two weeks. I remember when I could get away with uploading once a month. The new thing is you have to upload consistently and you’ve got to have a deeper knowledge base about whatever you’re discussing.

There’s a lot of people out there saying, “Just upload a bunch of videos and figure it out later.” I don’t think that’s a good policy with what I now know. Another reason I broke my YouTube channel is I got bored about things that were going down and how things were happening. I was bored with the subject matter. I was kind of bored with the responses. It was just something I didn’t want to do anymore.

I figured I started this thing and I could fix it. The best way to fix this is to start over. I started messing around with videos that were right because they bringing me leads I didn’t want. That’s an issue, a big, big issue.

Following your instincts is a really good thing to do sometimes. I would have probably been able to limp along for another year. But what’s happening on YouTube would have happened to me.

One big issue is segmentation. This was the biggest reason I broke my YouTube channel. With Hustler’s Kung Fu, there was literally fifteen different categories of people coming to the channel. So, when I put out an offer, maybe one or two of those groups would like it, but it would alienate the others. So that was a huge problem. It’s a good problem to have. Many people are struggling to get views. They may only get five or six views every time they put up a video.

I knew I had something to work with, so I dove into fixing the channel. I am learning so much. For example, if you have 10,000 t0 50,000 subscribers, you get a YouTube person. Your YouTube person will give you advice about what works.

What I currently have is a clunky channel. I have 15 different tribes coming here looking for different things. You can’t serve that many people without being a massive organization, which I’m not. Building a clunky channel will give you traffic. It will get you attention.

But, when you are chasing trends, your channel is subject to breaking itself. The minute you stop chasing trends, then you have to depend on your core audience. If you don’t have a core audience, it’s going to go really, really bad.

If you have a core audience, you can have a smaller channel. You won’t get the views of a larger channel, but you can sell more merchandise. Now that’s the game that I’m playing. That’s why I’m getting rid of certain categories and information.

I’m building a channel for the future. What I am doing is creating a Netflix affect intentionally. I’ve seen this for years. I’ve never tried to do it, it just happened. I’ve had people say, “Dude, I’ve been watching your channel straight for two or three days. That’s the Netflix affect.

Having a channel where people binge watch you, it keeps you in YouTube’s good graces. That increases your watch time. Also, if people are doing this, it means you have a lot of stuff people want to watch. That’s going to help you in terms of positioning yourself and selling stuff, which is awesome.

You should have as many playlists as you have subjects. When you see the channel’s front page now, it is easier to binge watch than it was before. Anything that helps you create a better customer experience is going to help you make more money. That was one of the issues.

I am uploading so many videos to encourage binge watching. My goal is to do three to five a day. You have to look at your analytics. Last weekend my, viewership plummeted. That’s explainable. My audience is 92% male. They’re watching football on the weekends. I’ve seen this year after year.

With the new YouTube algorithm, you don’t want to put your videos out on days when the viewership will be low. It’s pointless. This decision to not put videos out on the weekend is based on my data. Someone else with a different audience could crush it on Saturday.

Another reason I broke my channel is I was tired of the affiliate comments. On some of my better videos that got a bunch of traffic, there was all of this video click bait in the comments. Unfortunately, some of that spam still slips through. It’s a pain in the ass. With the newer stuff, I don’t get that as much.

Ultimately the reason I am doing this is the new rules. I saw what was happening. I saw YouTubers much bigger than me that were slipping. There are people who if they don’t change how they upload and what they’re doing, their channel is going to go extinct.

In 2009 when I started my channel, YouTube was three years old at the time. There weren’t a lot of people there yet. You can literally replace a big YouTuber in the YouTube ecosystem overnight. To prove this, look up Trainer. This channel is about how to play Pokemon. The channel was started in January. He gained 480,000 subscribers in two months. That’s because of the way this new algorithm works.

For every big YouTuber out there, there is another YouTuber positioned to take their place. With that kind of competition, there isn’t any loyalty. With the new algorithm and the way it works, they can afford to get rid of a big YouTuber. You need to understand that.

While YouTube is somewhat challenging, it is also replete with opportunity. Since it is so easy to scale now, there are a lot of people that will go from nothing to one to two million subscribers in a year. Success is going to be heavily based on topic.

In the long-game, if you don’t have channel integrity, you’re not going to last. It’s a slippery game. You can do the trendy stuff, but you’ll be a flash in the pan.

This is what I’ve learned. The more videos you put out, the better. Always keep some videos in the bank so that if you go out of town, you have some you can put out during that time. If you’re going to play the YouTube game, you’ve got to have consistent content.

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Today we’re going to talk about becoming an influencer. I was poking around on the internet, and I didn’t really see a lot of people talking about becoming an influencer. People talk about wanting to start a YouTube channel or an Instagram account because they want to make bread. The thing is, there are people on YouTube and Facebook who are making millions of dollars a year or a month being an influencer, not necessarily selling anything.

I am an influencer. I know, right. It’s kind of crazy. But, I sell stuff. Since I came into the game just selling stuff, it’s going to be hard for me to sit back and let someone else get all that money.

Let’s talk about being an Instagram influencer. I’m a media buyer and what that means is I buy placements on ads on YouTube, Facebook, whatever. So, when I’m looking for engagement, I’m looking for real engagement. I am looking for true engagement. Because the influencer marketplace is so dynamic and so big, that you have people who will inflate their numbers to make you think they are bigger than they are. If you advertise with those people, your money is not going to go anywhere.

Let’s say your name is Carl and you’re crazy about watches. You start an Instagram account of you “rocking” watches, right. You’ve got a little swag and a little style. The next thing you know, people are approaching you offering you $50 to post something for them on your account. So, then you put this post on your Instagram account.

Let’s say they make $10,000 in sales and the cost of the goods was $3000. You need to know your worth, because you just got $50 for posting the ad on your account and the guy made $10K. You can go to the Social Bluebook and this gives you the value of placements determined by your account metrics. You have to create an account, then they will give you dollar values you should charge based on your account activity. They offer values for a shout out and for a dedicated upload. Direct links and activity promotion are two other activities that are given a dollar value.

There is this girl named Mindy who is an influencer. What she does is take pictures in exotic places. A lot of hotels and retreats actually pay her to come and take pictures. I’m not kidding. I think she has five Instagram accounts. That is one way you can kill it with Instagram. Now, here’s the rub. You’ve got to build it.

You can make a lot of money doing this. You can have a lot of fun. You can go places. You can do stuff. But, you must build the Instagram account. Once you build it and you get true engagement, you can make what the average person makes in a year in a month or a quarter.

Now let’s talk about Facebook. We’ll talk about Kev on Stage. He’s another influencer. He uses his channel to create booking opportunities for himself. Let’s say he has 500 people and charges them $30 to attend. That’s $15,000. If he gets 70% of that with 30% going to the house, he still ends up making $10,500. Let’s just say he makes about $50,000 for working six days. That’s the power of being an influencer.

There’s another comedian I know who does about $100,000 a month in booking. I can’t remember the guy’s name. He has bug eyes.

The new YouTube algorithm is so dope, that it is allowing people to get to $400 to maybe $1000 in AdSense money with relatively small subscriber bases. It’s not about the subscriber bases, it’s about the views. I was watching this young lady who has about 25,000 subscribers but she does about $3800 a month in AdSense because she has like 12 banking videos that keep bringing that money in.

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Question: Can you build an audience on Blogger?

Answer: Don’t do it because you can’t take that audience with you.

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Here’s how it goes on being an influencer, you have to create a following. Then you monetize that following by taking ads or promote a post. But, first you have to build a following.

Influencer marketing is growing and starting to spread. It’s mostly on Instagram. It’s on YouTube and it is starting to come to Facebook.

If you want to do YouTube or podcasts and you don’t know what you want to do, start on something. You can always change later. But, that will allow you to build valuable skill sets that you can use in other ventures.

You need to get started now. Get your camera phone and start making videos now. Write a goal down and do it. Go through the ugly beginner thing. This influencer thing is just getting started.

There are going to be influencers who have more power and pull than cable channels. Yes, it’s already happening. The epicenter is Los Angeles, Salt Lake Center and New York and some other cities. You’re going to have YouTubers with 50, 60 million subscribers, right? Then, they’re going to drop a video and get 10 million people just like that. That is coming.

There’s this guy named Casey Neistat. People love this guy. Every time he puts up a video, he could easily be making $30,000 to $50,000 per video. That doesn’t include the old inventory; that’s just for new uploads. He could be making $500,000 to a million a month from YouTube ads.

You want to get on this gravy train. Some people think it’s too late, but it’s not. It’s just beginning.

I’ve been testing the algorithm. As I said earlier, I’ve been getting away from the stuff that YouTube wants me to do. The problem is it is diametrically opposed to me making money. So, I have just decided that I will pay for traffic. I did that and it exploded my channel. I got 9300 subscribers in one month. The paid traffic was subsidized by AdSense. I didn’t have ads on all my videos that I had paid traffic on.

It blows my mind for real. I am still testing this. But, essentially the money I am paying for traffic could be paid back to me by the AdSense money I earn from that extra traffic. I was like, “Oh My Goodness.”

Some of you are looking for sure things. This is not a sure thing. But, I’m telling you, you need to get started. You don’t know, but you could become one of those people making this crazy bread.

This is incredible. This is like crazy incredible. You can literally pull out a camera phone and start making videos.

There’s this guy, Peter McKinnon who just got started and he’s doing really well. He just got started about a year ago. He does a lot of vlogging, photography stuff. Four months ago, he had $500K. He’s got over a million subscribers. This could be you in a year.

Get started. Don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t worry about having the right camera. Just get started making videos.

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Let’s talk about the money I made. I made $2352 on YouTube and $18, 512 is the money I made on my courses. Typically, when people talk about the money they made, the don’t get into the details. Some videos make a lot more than other ones.

It only takes a handful of videos to really roll your channel out. We’re going to talk about browser features. Now what are browser features? It’s important to remember that most of the traffic, over 60% is mobile. One of the ways you can get your video to take off is to learn to use browser features correctly. A lot of people don’t talk about that, but that is why I am all up in your grill. I am always up in your grill.

YouTube will move a video that has browser features and that used keywords a certain way. YouTube will take those videos and push them. Here’s the thing. The video doesn’t have to be that good.

If you make a good video, if people get to see it they’ll watch, right? But due to the way YouTube is set up, people may not see the video. If you have subscribers, they will not see it. You would think that all of your subscribers would get notification when your videos are up. Only five to ten percent get notifications.

At some point, you’re going to have to make a decision about whether you want to push your videos or not. What I mean by that is you are going to have to decide whether you are going to pay for traffic.

There is authority. There is ranking, and there are browser features. When you get all those things working really well, then your channel can take off. Another part of my success is about having something to sell.

Whatever you start your YouTube channel off with is what you need to stick with. You can’t change it up. You can’t mix it up. If you start off with comedy, you’re going to have to ride with comedy.

This is my recommendation for anyone starting a YouTube channel. Start off with your phone and make 30 videos. The reason I say this is because if you can’t make 30 videos with your phone, you can’t make 30 videos with all of this other equipment.

You can still have controversial content on YouTube, but they aren’t going to make money. You remember how old Las Vegas got sanitized and cleaned up. YouTube is going through this process right now.

I can’t overstate how important browser features are because the video has to be pleasing to the eye. If there is a lot of space around you on your YouTube video, people won’t like it as much. If you seem far away from the camera, viewers don’t like that. Part of it is probably because a lot of millennials are using their phones and they have short attention spans.

If you’re going to do a YouTube video, you need to be close and personal with your audience. It’s little weird. When I do it, I feel like I’m about to jump into somebody’s mouth.

Let’s talk about the money the top 20,000 YouTubers make. They make from about $50,000 a month to millions. You’ve got to create your own lane. Just doing what someone else is doing is not going to help you.

Browser features are huge. This is why sometimes you’ll see someone with a low-quality video take off. It’s because of browser features. They’re very important.

Question: Can you talk about live streaming videos versus regular ones.

Answer: I do a lot of live streaming. Part of the reason is because I have so much to put out, and because doing a regular video is so time-consuming. The channel was kind of dead for a while and I just started getting back into it.

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In June, the channel was dead. August was when we woke the channel up. It’s taken me about 90 days to wake up the channel. There’s a lot to it because as far as demographics go, I’m an anomaly. I have a YouTube channel and I’m doing well. But, I know why I’m doing well.

The new YouTube algorithm is making it possible to just blow up your channel. This one guy went from like 5000 subscribers to over a million subscribers in one year. It’s getting to the point where getting 100,000 subscribers and getting your gold play button is nothing.

My goal this month was to get 10,000 subscribers. I’ll probably do 9500. My goal next month is probably going to be to do 15,000. It’s very possible that I may be getting a play button this year. I understand how YouTube works and I know what to do.

I use AdWords to promote my videos. I don’t use it to promote my new videos. I use it to promote my old videos. One of the things you should know about this, is I have a huge catalog of videos. It’s pretty interesting how it works for me.

It kind of depends on your audience. I’m in the “How to Make Money Space” and the “How to Start a Business Space.” But, I’m not part of the Hustler Porn crowd where they show the flashy cars and chicks that appeals to the 16 to 27-year-old crowd. That’s not really me. I’m in that demographic, but I have a different message.

I had to figure out a way to get noticed. That’s why I use paid traffic. It’s worked like gangbusters. I have gotten 15,000 subscribers in eight weeks. Of course, if no one is interested in the topic you’re talking about, you’re not going to do well.

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Question: Does YouTube pay less now?

Answer: YouTube pay is all over the place. All videos do not get the same ads. That’s one of the big determinants of how much money you will make. Some smaller channels can make more money because of what they talk about. That’s something you should think about.

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Question: If you were starting a new YouTube channel, how would you drive traffic to it?

Answer: A lot of ways. The first thing you need to do is build an audience. You need to have something that an audience will come to.

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You need to start your business using the processes that work for that type of business. There are different types of businesses. They all have different characteristics and unique needs.

Then you have lifestyle businesses. That’s what I do. I’m a writer. I’m a digital pimp. I create eBooks. I create audio books. My big thing is freedom. I believe in creating things that make money when I’m not around. I spent all day yesterday working on some personal things, and I came home to money.

Then you have the service business. This type of business can work for people who have no clue about what they want to do. They don’t know what their talents are. What’s a service business? You help people out. Services like carpentry, washing cars and cleaning houses are huge businesses.

Then you have the physical businesses which include Walmart and Macy’s. This is a very different business with a very different behavior. It is nothing like a venture business.

Take a venture business. That’s Amazon, Uber and Facebook. These are businesses that people with very deep pockets said, “Hey, this is going to win.” They opened up those deep pockets and put coins all over the table. The thing is most of those businesses fail and a lot of money is lost. We tend to look at the winners and ignore the fact that most of the businesses never get off the ground.

While most of us won’t start the next Facebook, many of us can start a business that sustains us. That’s the most important thing to remember. There’s not going to be another Facebook for a minute, because the conditions were just right for it to get started. When I say that, people say that I’m hating. But, Facebook had no competition. The idea was grand and the execution was brutal. But, they had no competition.

When YouTube started, they had no competition. Facebook wasn’t the first to market with social network; Myspace was first. Facebook just had better execution. Uber didn’t invent taxi service, they just executed better. What makes these companies successful is timing, execution and vision.

My thoughts are you should do as much as you can to start a business before you ask for money. Bootstrap the hell out of what you’re doing because when people open up their wallets, they’re taking equity in the company.

I’ll give you a story about how things get real when the money hits the table. There is even a video about it on YouTube. I had this partnership with this dude and things were cool. Then we had some big sales and the money started rolling in. He had a lot of bills, so he wanted me to subsidize his life. That’s when the partnership ended.

When Gates, Cuban and Zuckerberg got started, they didn’t go out seeking money. They wanted to serve the world. I think Google’s mission was to index the world. That’s pretty heady stuff.

The venture business model does not work for everything. Anytime you asked for money, you become beholden to them. You become their bitch.

When I was broker than broke, I could not ask for money. I just couldn’t. It turned out to be one of my better decisions. When you use other people’s money, it can be very expensive. So, if you are a founder, I suggest you do as much as you can before you ask for money. Many businesses are expensive to build because people make them expensive.

Part of the issue is a lack of foresight. What I mean by this is the decisions that you make today are going to determine your tomorrows.

Let’s say you’re 25 and you have this idea for a business, but you’re doing it the regular way. You’re going to get all of your ducks in a row. You’re going to make sure you don’t have any debt. You’re going to do all this planning and by the time you’re ready, you have money in the bank. But you have one problem. That idea that you have, the conditions have changed. You realize that you can’t wait a year or two years or three years while you get your shit together, because conditions continually change.

If you have an idea, get started with what you have right now where you are. As you build, you’re going to learn some stuff. When you’re building a business, your most successful days are your ugliest days. That’s where the success happens.

It’s in those ugly moments when there is nobody around and people are laughing at you. You’re not going to the party or the beach because you’re at your office. That’s where success is built. This is why. When you can endure all of that bullshit, you have made yourself a much stronger person.

One of the reasons so many businesses fail, is because the minute things get janky, they give up. Believe me, things will get janky. People just freak out.

I had a client who got into this business and the money was flowing. They reached out to me because the money stopped flowing and they had a really bad day. They called me up and they were freaking out. I told the guy to take his phone out and take a picture of the wall. He thought I was being silly, but he took a picture of the wall. He asked me, “What does this do?” I reminded him that today was just a snapshot. I said, “You’ve got an obligation to yourself.” I continued, “You can hold on to this day and put it in your fucked-up album or you can delete it and move on.”

That’s what many people do. They take a snapshot and put it in the fucked-up album. Then when the fucked-up album gets so big, they decide they can’t look at it anymore. Then they stop trying and that’s when they fail. If you keep going, then you will win.

I’m going to give you a hard number here. It’s eleven. Eleven years is the average time it takes an entrepreneur to make their first million. I’m not talking about their first million-dollar year but their first million dollars collectively. Why? Because there are a whole lot of things that go wrong. It’s ridiculously hard at times. But, if you serve enough people, you will be successful.

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